A Twist of Murder

Book 5: Dickens of a Crime

by Heather Redmond

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Historical Mysteries; International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

In Victorian England, aspiring author Charles Dickens is on the case again--in pursuit of missing orphans, legendary treasure, and a cold-blooded killer in the latest installment of Heather Redmond's charming series that reimagines the famous writer as an amateur sleuth.
Harrow-on-the-Hill, March 1836: In a sense, orphans Ollie, John, and Arthur have always been treasure hunters. The mudlarks have gone from a hardscrabble life scavenging the banks of the Thames for bits and bobs to becoming students at a boarding school outside of London, thanks to the kind and generous intercession of Charles Dickens. But now they're missing--as is, apparently, a treasure map.
When Charles arrives at the school, he's hit with another twist--the servant girl who was allegedly in possession of the map has been strangled in the icehouse. Unbeknownst to them on their spirited adventure, his young friends may be in mortal danger. Now Charles and his fiancée Kate Hogarth, who has come to join him in the search for the runaways, must artfully dodge false leads and red herrings to find the boys and the map--before X marks the spot of their graves . . .

Release date: October 25, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Harrow on the Hill, England, Tuesday, March 1, 1836

“Drat.” Charles Dickens bent to retrieve a letter, fallen from his greatcoat pocket, as he dismounted the stagecoach in front of the Crown and Anchor Inn.

A russet-haired youth in a new suit of clothes jumped down from the stair and swiped up the missive. He had been inside the coach along with Charles, a Unitarian minister, and his wife. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” Charles considered the lad. “Do you attend Aga Academy?”

Wind caught at his curls, making the lad look like an Irish setter. When he shook his head, the resemblance grew even more pronounced. “I’m at Harrow. Aga is much smaller.”

The coach shifted as a hostler disconnected the horses that had hauled them the thirteen miles from London. A yardman climbed to the top of the coach and untied ropes securing bundles and baggage on the roof. Charles tugged the shivering Harrow lad out of the way just before a large bundle of cloth dropped on him.

“Watch yer ’ead,” the yardman shouted a few seconds too late.

Charles shot a disgruntled look at the man, then spoke to his youthful companion. “I’m going into the public house. Would you like a hot drink, too?”

“Yes, but I have to fag for Stafford this afternoon. At least I can black his boots in front of the fire.” He gave Charles a mock salute and trotted out of the yard, shoulders hunched against the wind.

The letter held in Charles’s glove caught his attention again, so he headed through the yard, dodging puddles.

Low voices made a pleasant hum in the coffee room when he entered. A few men from the top of the coach had already taken the better benches, eager to make up for the midday meal they had missed on the road. Charles called for a hot rum and water, then took a stool at the bar, all that was available. After dropping his bag next to the stool, he glanced at the grimy directive again.

He’d taken the first stage available out of the city, per his friend and fellow Morning Chronicle reporter William Aga’s letter. William had begged him to come to the school quickly, so Charles had made his apologies to his editor, George Hogarth, and left the office late that morning.

Charles had been here briefly a few times, accompanying charity cases to the school, which was owned and run by William’s father, Eustace Aga. Charles and William’s scholarship fund supported three of the students, known to them from their former career as mudlarks, scouring the banks of the Thames for coal and any pieces of portable property the ever-shifting river cast up.

The most senior Aga, William’s grandfather, had died a few weeks before, and William had made the journey here then for the funeral, but Charles had no idea why William found trouble here now. His fellow reporter had traveled out of London the day before to report on a local disaster and must have stopped in at the school for a quick visit.

A barman appeared at Charles’s elbow, holding the steaming drink with calloused fingers. “Wot are you ’ere sellin’?” the man asked in a friendly fashion.

“I’m a reporter from London,” Charles explained.

The man shrugged. “What is newsworthy ’ere?”

“I understand a collapse occurred in a local gravel pit,” Charles suggested. “A man died?”

“Oh, ’im.” The barman lifted the hem of his apron to his nose and rubbed. “Likely ’e caused it ’imself with shoddy work. Drunk all the bloody time.”

Charles took the vessel. The hot metal instantly warmed his fingers, which began to tingle, not unpleasantly. “In truth, I’ve been summoned to Aga Academy. Any news of it?”

The barman’s lip curled under his whiskers. They covered his face in a luxurious black fur, while what hair was left on the top of his head stuck out in sparse quills. “’E’s an ‘’Ard Fact’ man, that schoolmaster. You never see a boy from there larking about in a ’appy manner. Not like the ’arrow lads.”

Charles attempted to translate what the man was saying. “A ‘Hard Fact’ man? You mean Mr. Aga has become a disciple of utilitarianism?”

The barman sniffed. Two travelers close to the fire called for bowls of stew. “I mean Fagin Sikes, ’is partner. Whatever ’e is, the boys don’t like it.”

“Mr. Aga has brought in a new partner?” Charles frowned and downed his cooling glass of restorative as the man moved down the bar to his other customers. An application of hard facts might be what was needed for education, but it left little room for whimsy, and what was a boy but a whimsical creature? What would his own, often pain-filled childhood have been without his father’s books and his sister Fanny’s songs?

Charles had never had a reason to dislike Mr. Aga. He’d seemed pleasant and reasonable, like his son. Why had he chosen such a different sort of partner? Why take on a partner at all?

Charles ought to have made more of an effort to keep in contact with the boys they sponsored. Little Ollie, though maimed by a terrible accident, probably had learned to write by now. Cousin Arthur could still be too young, but Poor John, they had decided, likely had obtained twelve years and might have learned quickly, given the benefits of a regular diet and a bed that didn’t consist of a ragged blanket under Blackfriars Bridge. However, as a result of Charles’s work for the newspapers, his first book, and his upcoming marriage to Mr. Hogarth’s daughter Kate, he hadn’t visited the school since the start of the year.

One thing he suspected, though: his young ex-mudlark friends who were at the school on charity wouldn’t handle an authoritarian regime well. They were used to following only the tides and the dictates of the mudlark gang’s leader.

“Oh, aye,” the barman said, returning. “Mr. Sikes ’as ’is finger in a few pies hereabouts. ’E’s on the board of the workhouse, for one thing.”

“A local man?” Charles sniffed as two bowls of stew passed by his nose, but it didn’t smell fresh. Rather, the scent of burnt potato wafted into the air, a top note that did not entice. He’d likely much prefer the contents of the men’s Toby jugs, for the rum had been more than passable.

Tea at a school might not be any nicer, but he suspected the masters would eat better than the students. Even bread and butter might be better than the stew. Harrow on the Hill was a rather small enclave, and he didn’t know what he might find to eat on the street, but that was another possibility.

He rose from the stool, the muscles of his legs complaining of their hours of crablike bending in the coach, and picked up his bag.

“Yes, grandson of the local squire, a local fixture,” the barman said.

“No stew?” asked a friendly maidservant as Charles handed his coins to the barman.

“I’m more in the mood for a pie,” Charles explained.

The gap-toothed girl worried at her lip. “Stephen had to close his bakeshop for a couple of weeks to tend his parents at their farm. His father broke his leg.”

Charles sighed. No wonder he preferred London. One person would be too insignificant in a large city to damage the workings of everyone’s stomachs. “Very well. Off to Aga Academy, then. I shouldn’t wait for my friend any longer, if something is wrong. Heard anything about the state of their kitchen?”

The maid shook her head. “You never see their boys here. They are too busy having facts forced into their heads.”

Charles walked south past an assortment of businesses on the rather horizontally challenging High Street. For once, he didn’t have a young charity student to shepherd along and reassure, so he could assess the town for himself. It had a prosperous air. Two more inns appeared; the area had a great deal of traffic for such a small place, perhaps due to the schools. He admired the yellow-brick front of a chandler shop with living space above. Sweet beeswax wafted from an open window. Many buildings were constructed from red brick in a familiar Tudor style. He passed a chapel, a library, and various houses. Few students were evident at this time of day.

Sadly, he did not pass any pie sellers. He expected the street merchants knew to come out when the students were free to buy their wares. His stomach gurgled, not being on the Harrow schedule.

His mind intent on his stomach, he did not see the branch until he tripped on it. Catching himself on a stone urn that marked the start of the Aga schoolyard, he discovered someone had chosen today to trim the box hedge surrounding the yard behind the low fence. Though the school had fewer buildings and a more commonplace appearance than Harrow, someone took pride in the entrance. Hopefully that meant the school didn’t need funds, as he had no money free for raised fees, what with his marital home to furnish.

The front door of the aged timber-framed main school building opened. Charles spotted William in the doorway, his neckerchief askew. He clapped his top hat over his thick tawny locks as he pulled the door shut behind him. His mouth, which usually looked ready to smile, was rounded with frantic energy. Faint lines etched the skin around his eyes, proving that he was closer to thirty than twenty. And horrors, was the seam attaching the right sleeve to his coat ripped?

“Have you been attacked?” Charles called, speeding up.

William’s gaze focused into the yard. “Charles! You’re here!”

“I came on the next coach after your letter arrived. I didn’t even return to Furnival’s Inn. Just grabbed my extra shirt from my desk at the Chronicle.” Charles stopped at the base of the stairs. Yes, he did see a thread dangling from his friend’s shoulder. “You need your wife’s services.”

“What? Why?”

Charles and William met on the last step. Charles reached for the loose thread on the other man’s jacket.

“What?” William asked, swatting Charles’s hand away.

“You don’t look as well turned out as usual,” Charles observed. “What is going on? Are the mudlarks in trouble?”

William’s breath left his chest in a mighty blast. He might have been a wind god himself, the way his frustration-soaked breath blew Charles’s hair. “It has been a matter of multiple calamities.”

“Nothing that can’t be solved over tea and buns?” Charles asked hopefully.

“Would I have called you here, a month before your wedding and risking Hogarth’s ire, if that were the case?” William asked.

“Any minute now you’ll be pulling at your hair like a state mourner,” Charles observed. “Can we enter at least?”

His friend visibly gritted his teeth and opened the front door. Charles stepped inside, then dropped the valise containing his writing desk and spare shirt under the table with the guest book.

The environs looked much as he remembered them. The main building held the classrooms and dining room. On either side were two smaller houses, which acted as boardinghouses. Mr. Aga’s house was directly across the street, the most distinguished of the structures, with ivy winding around trellises along the walls. Two other boardinghouses abutted the master’s house. The operation was smaller than Harrow but still managed to employ seven lower masters and a couple of assistant masters as teachers and student managers.

Charles paced forward and looked to one end of the front hall, then the other. A sheen of dust adorned one corner, and a spider had spun a delicate line across the left window. “Someone has missed the morning tidy,” he observed.

“And no surprise,” William snapped. “Can you cease your perambulations and direct those penetrating eyes to me, please?”

Charles turned, shocked at the outburst. Straightening, he clasped his hands behind his back. “What has happened? Your father?”

“Ollie, John, and Arthur have run off. That was the first difficulty,” William reported.

“Together?” Charles remembered what the barman had said and knew he shouldn’t be surprised. The ex-mudlarks had scarpered.

“Yes, or at least we assume. It’s imagined they ran off with a traveling circus a couple of days before. I stopped here yesterday on my way back to London and learned they had already been gone a day.”

“Blazes.” Charles exhaled. “If your father had sent a note to three-thirty-two Strand or your home, you wouldn’t have been there to receive it.”

“He had not, at the time,” William said, “being far more used to the management of unruly lads than I am. But as their benefactor, eventually he would have notified us.”

“Hmmm,” Charles muttered. Perhaps they might have been notified after quarterly fees were paid, but that was a couple of weeks from now. “You might have sent for me for the sheer adventure of chasing a traveling circus. It does sound like a good caper for the mudlarks and myself, but Kate will not be pleased if she does not have a bed to sleep in when we return from our wedding trip.”

“I thought the adventure would be brief,” William explained. “And both of us chiding the boys would have more effect. You are, after all, the one with many younger brothers.”

“True. We shall find the boys and then return to London posthaste,” Charles declared.

William shook his head. “The situation has deteriorated since I wrote.”

“More boys to the circus? They must have some unusual acts,” Charles mused. “Something more than the usual bearded lady and equestrian riders?”

“I have no idea. I have yet to complete the most basic inquiries. A storm came through last night and then—”

Charles frowned as William’s voice caught. “What has happened?”

William cleared his throat. “My young cousin Agnes, who works as a maid at the school, went missing after breakfast this morning.”

“Is she tasked with sweeping and dusting here?” Charles asked.

William shrugged. The motion of his broad shoulders split the seam of his coat farther. “No one is doing their duties this morning. They are too busy searching the school grounds and making inquiries in town. She must be the first priority.”

“What were you doing after breakfast?”

“I went to the church to notify the vicar, so that word of the boys’ disappearance would spread. I stopped in at Harrow and a couple of the shops. Then I returned to eat with Father, intending to ride out to the circus next. Then this troubling matter. . .”

Charles glanced about the spare space. The walls were meant to be white but had the dinginess that meant a coat of paint needed applying in between terms. A staircase led up to the schoolrooms. The lower floor contained a parlor for the parents, Mr. Aga’s office, the dining room, and kitchen.

“As a maid, Agnes must be up early. Is she the one to light the fires?”

“No, there is another maid who does that. Since Agnes is family, she was never tasked with the most menial of duties.” William nodded to himself. “She does, however, share a room with that person.”

“Who is?”

“Nancy Price. She is fourteen. Agnes is only twelve.”

Charles straightened his hat. “Not likely to have been an assignation gone wrong, then.”

William’s lip curled. “And not before breakfast, either.”

Charles’s gaze went back to William’s coat. “When did that rip begin?”

William touched his shoulder. “It caught on an exposed nail in the coach. A very large person pressed me against the wall for the entire trip from Wembley Green.”

“I am sorry to hear that. I had a very pleasant minister with me. We discussed his efforts at an institution in Watford.”

“Blast it,” William muttered. “I suppose I should change.”

“No, we should find the girl,” Charles sighed. “I just wondered if the rip was tied in to the situation here, as it isn’t like you to be untidy. What is the routine? Nancy Price rises early from their chamber somewhere to light the fires.”

“They are in the attic in this building,” William said. “Just the pair of them and the kitchen staff. The boardinghouses have their own accommodations.”

“How many kitchen staff?”

“Three. Two girls share a room, and the cook has her own. She told me the young staff are put directly to work upon rising and dine after the students are fed. Which means Agnes disappeared some six hours ago.”

“She ate in the kitchen with her fellow trio of servant girls,” Charles clarified.

“Yes.”

“Where was she meant to go after that?”

“Cook said Agnes spilled oatmeal down her apron and her attempt to sponge it away made the cloth even more disgraceful, so she was sent to her room to fetch her clean one.”

“Laundry day yesterday,” Charles observed, for today was Tuesday.

“Yes. After that she’d been meant to collect her broom and get to work on dusting and polishing here on the ground floor.”

“Explaining the condition of this room.”

“Exactly.” William followed Charles’s glance toward the spiderweb. “But no one noticed until time came for the students’ midday meal. The maids seem to be quite independent.”

Charles frowned. “You father has four unsupervised young girls in this building, along with a quantity of boys?”

“It’s not so bad as that. The kitchen maids are in the kitchen. Only Agnes and Nancy would ever be said to be unsupervised.”

Charles listened while staring at the sparsely decorated space. He crossed the front hall and peered into the parents’ receiving room. No rugs and the fire had gone out. Fluff in the corners and the four oil paintings of the Chiltern Hills were turning yellow with age and poor varnish. He imagined the school was running short of funds. Too many charity students, perhaps. “I expect hiring family saved money. Does your father pay Agnes?”

“I don’t know the arrangements,” William snapped with an air of impatience. “Come up to her room with me, will you? I haven’t checked it.”

“How long have you known she was missing?”

“Less than an hour.” William gestured to the stairs. “I was with my father at his house, helping him with the accounts. For a schoolmaster, he is not good with sums.”

“Running a school is difficult,” Charles murmured, remembering his mother’s failure to successfully open her own school when he was young. She hadn’t managed to attract a single pupil.

He followed William up the steps leading from the front hall. As soon as the staircase curved out of sight, the walls become dingier, displaying the handiwork of boys running sticky substances along the surface. William took him down the hall past a set of four schoolrooms, then opened a door to a smaller staircase leading to the attic. They went up.

“The main area is for storage, extra schoolbooks and the like.” He gestured at crates of books. Broken chairs and a deal table carved with a naughty word also waited forlornly.

“The boys’ trunks?” Charles asked, pointed at the evidence under the eaves.

“Yes. It makes the process more systematic to have them all here. Cook’s room is to the right, and the two maids’ chambers are on the left.” William walked across the floor, leaving footsteps in a layer of dust.

Charles coughed in his wake, smelling a hint of coal and fish.

William stopped at the end of the room. “I don’t know which one is hers.”

Charles stepped around him. “Just open one of the doors. I’ll take the other. No one is up here at this time of day.”

“True.” William grasped one doorknob, and Charles turned the other.

He looked in at a rather large space for a pair of maids. The cook’s lodging must be positively palatial. One window let light into the space. The windowpane had the appearance of a fresh cleaning, and both beds were made up with faded but warm counterpanes, perhaps ones that had served student rooms until the dye had leached from the fabric. A simple cross made from branches tied together was nailed to the wall between the beds, and an engraving of the king, torn from a magazine, was nailed above four pegs on the walls. Aprons and cloaks were aligned on the pegs. At the foot of each bed were simple wooden boxes. Charles flipped up each lid and saw spare garments of modest nature.

He closed the lids and turned in the space. All and all, highly respectable and homogenous.

Leaning his head into the main room, he called, “Find anything? I can’t identify the inhabitants.”

“This is Agnes’s room,” William responded, his voice muffled by the walls.

Charles went into the other room and found chaos. “This is different from the other room.”

Nothing hung neatly on the walls here. One glove was stuck onto a peg, pointing accusingly into the room, but otherwise cloaks were draped on the floor. No sign of clean aprons, but Charles saw an oatmeal-stained one lying half in, half out of a chipped enamel basin with the morning’s washing-up water still in it. Proof that Agnes lived here. The cross and the king weren’t on these walls, so they must have been a sign of individuality in the kitchen maids.

The beds had the same basic coverings, but neither bed had been made. Charles saw the linen looked clean enough.

“Look.” William pointed at a red stain on one coverlet.

Charles’s pulse leapt as William leaned over it and touched a finger to it.

“Never mind. It’s jam,” he reported. “I did think the color looked wrong for blood.”

“Does your cousin have a sweet tooth?”

William responded after a pause. “More like a savory, I would have said. Her father is a dairy farmer.”

Charles went to the boxes at the foot of each bed, both of which were open and jumbled. “The other room is quite a different story. Neat as a pin.”

“These girls are younger than the others.” William turned in the space, like Charles had in the other room. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

Charles glanced in the boxes again. “It doesn’t appear that anything is missing, compared to the other room. Except maybe an apron belonging to the other girl. Agnes’s spare is accounted for.”

“We don’t know what we’d be looking for, however. Does this mess indicate signs of struggle?”

“Impossible to know without talking to someone with intimate knowledge of the room.”

“Nancy Price is cleaning the sickroom in one of the boardinghouses,” William said. “We can talk to her when she’s done and find out if she knows where her extra apron is.”

“For now, we need to retrace Agnes’s movements,” Charles declared. “We know that story of Agnes spilling oatmeal and coming up here to replace her apron was true. The question is, Did anyone see her after that with her clean apron on?”

“Let’s check the cook’s room,” William suggested. “But then we’ve cleared the attic.”

Charles went to the door. “Agnes can’t possibly be on the main floor. Let’s check the classrooms quickly, then search the rest of the property. This isn’t an unsubstantial area.”

“No. What money my father inherited from my great-grandmother is tied up in the land and buildings. He really needs every penny of tuition for the school.”

Charles waved his arm. “We’ll have to work on an endowment, rather than this piecemeal fundraising we’ve been doing. A project for after the wedding.”

“I hope we don’t have to attend a funeral first,” William said soberly.

Charles and William returned to the ground floor of the school. They went through the empty dining room, full to the walls with long rows of tables and benches. The scent of burned porridge started at the large cauldron at one end of the room and followed them into the kitchen.

“Any news of that dratted child?” demanded a petite woman with bulging eyes. Her bare forearms were dusted with flour, the tiny hairs on her arms waving white like spiky flags.

“We’ve scarcely progressed since I saw you last, Cook,” William said with a friendly smile. “Can you tell me if the girls keep their rooms poorly?”

Cook pulled a face, exposing an empty spot in her lower gum. “Mrs. Bedwin is meant to be supervising them, but she’s usually focused on Mr. Grant’s building.”

“Bedwin is the . . . ?” Charles inquired.

“Housekeeper,” William explained. “Mr. Grant is the mathematics master who has charge of boardinghouse Alpha.”

“Her rooms are not in this house?”

“They are in the basement. The floor slopes, so she has windows.”

Cook sniffed.

“What?” asked Charles.

“The windows open. She’s no better than she ought to be,” Cook said darkly.

“You don’t think she sleeps in her rooms?” William asked.

“She’s meant to check on the girls every night to make sure their candle is out, isn’t she?” Cook demanded. “Used to come upstairs in her dressing gown and slippers to make sure all four of ’em were where they were supposed to be.”

“When did she stop doing that?”

“After Valentine’s Day,” the cook sputtered, her mouth pursed.

“Thank you,” Charles said, not wanting to indulge the woman in her distasteful gossip. “But as to the rooms? Do you check them?”

“Enough to know my girls are toeing the line, unlike that tweeny and your cousin, sir.”

“I see,” William murmured.

Charles turned to his friend and nodded. “We’ll be on the grounds searching, unless you think we should check the basement.”

“As you like,” Cook said, picking up her dough and settling it into a baking pan.

“A quick look,” William told Charles.

They headed down the stairs behind the kitchen into the subterranean regions of the school. The familiar smell of a coal chute greeted them, and William had to light a lantern intended for the purpose to check dark corners. The housekeeper’s rooms were imperfectly tidy and empty of humanity.

Charles pointed to the mantelpiece in the sitting room.

“Ah,” William said, setting down the lantern, which wasn’t needed here, thanks to the promised windows. He picked up a card with a silhouette of a Cupid pasted to it. “The . . .